There Are Some Things I Will Not Tell Them
by the-valkyrie-writes
Summary: After the end of the war, and the execution of her tormentor, Helen Hirsch thinks back on her life at the Red House, and her choices thereafter.
1. Contradiction

**Hey all! Don't worry, I am still working on _Fallen_ despite publishing this now. I have arrived safely in India and am still adjusting a bit, but have been writing a lot! Just wanted to put out this one-shot which has been floating around in my head for a while. **

**Disclaimer: Character portrayals are based on Schindler's List, the film adaptation of Keneally's "Schindler's Ark", and I do not in any way intend offence or trivialisation of the real people mentioned herein.**

**PLEASE NOTE: This excerpt runs in accordance with history/the book/the film, so follows the real events, not the AU situation in _Fallen_. This has no relation to _Fallen_ at all.**

I expect that one day, people will ask me what it was like, working for him.

They will ask me how I managed to survive it, how I kept going through the long, dark nights and unbearably painful days. And I expect that their hands will fly to their mouths when I tell them of the unspeakable horrors I witnessed and the conditions and punishments I endured.

I am free now, am I not? I am free to tell people what I have experienced and how I felt throughout the whole thing, aren't I? I do not wake fearing for my life. It is a much preferable situation in anybody's view.

I do not have to answer to a man who holds my life in his hands, and I do not have to live in terror that one day my life will end on the whim of a man who does not know mercy or compassion.

So I will tell them.

I will tell them all about that day at the camp when I first saw him. I was so terrified, so cold, and the ironic thing is, I never thought it would be me. I was the only girl there with next to no domestic experience, and I didn't see the use in lying. I thought my inexperience would save me – I thought he would not want a maid with no experience. And yet he did.

I do not know why, even after all this time.

Although I suppose it was not that long, really. It felt much longer than it was, and I feel like I aged far more than I should have in the time I worked at the villa. I do not think it is so surprising though.

I will tell them about the time I helped young Lisiek with one of his jobs, only to hear, a few hours later, the gunshot which ended his life.

But there are some things I will not tell them.

I will not tell them how the Herr Kommandant often looked at me so strangely, as if he wanted to say something but couldn't quite make up his mind how to. Sometimes I would look up and feel his eyes on me before I saw him, and his eyes would always be cold, like shards of ice. I could never read what he was thinking, and much more often than not, I did not want to.

I will not tell them of the times I would pass him in the hallway and wince, tense with fear, not only for worry of punishment for a job inadequately done, but because his proximity reminded me just how vulnerable, how alone I was in this world. Sometimes it seemed that he and I were the only ones to exist in the moments when we were too close, too quiet.

They will already know, of course, of his trial, and his execution. A few might even know how he wrote to me to ask me to witness for him at the trial. They asked me to testify against him too. In the end, I didn't go at all. I couldn't bear to look across the courtroom and see his cold anger as I spoke against him, a look which had always promised retribution. I knew he could not hurt me in the court, of course, but it would make the threat no less visible.

Mostly, I hated him. But a part of me would not reconcile "murderer" and "war criminal" with the man who would reprimand officers who looked at me the wrong way for too long. Hypocrite. The man who ensured that I did not suffer as the prisoners in the camp did. But I had my own sufferings.

He was a bizarre contradiction. I will never understand who he was, this man who could talk about culture and music with so much light in his gaze and then curse my people, steely-eyed, in the same breath. He played the piano. He would play Bach and then strike me with the same pair of hands.

I will not tell them that twisted as he was, at times I had only him, and I was glad of it.

_I live to tell my tale, but I carry my own guilt. I am sorry. There is so much I regret._

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**Please let me know what you thought! Stay tuned for another installment of _Fallen_, coming soon!**

**\- the-valkyrie-writes**


	2. Correspondence

**The requested precursor to the one-shot. Please let me know what you think of it!**

**DISCLAIMER: As usual, I own nothing and all portrayals are based on depictions in Schindler's List, decorated with historical truths.**

* * *

_My dear Helen,_

_I hope this letter finds you in good health, although I do not doubt that the receipt of it will shock you. I must say that I shock myself writing it. _

_It is perhaps a vain hope which I hold, that you may spare a moment to read this letter in its entirety, and not cast it into the fire upon recognising my script. I would ask you to hold that impulse for a few minutes more._

_You will have heard, by now, that I face trial. Hardly a shock to me, to be truthful, and although most of the charges are petty, they hold the risk of life imprisonment or death for me. Some things will never leave you, I suppose. You may wish this fate upon my head, and I would not blame you, but I would ask you to cast your mind back to the relative ease with which you lived in my house in Krakow, and how little your work was in comparison with that of your compatriots in my camp. I believe I have not given you cause to loathe me, now we are parted._

_It is my wish that you would testify for me. A surprise request of you, perhaps, but it would please me greatly were I to see your face again, if only fleetingly. I would not ask this of you did I not feel your help would be instrumental. I believe you will also be called upon to testify against me; a ridiculous proposition, as I see it. I did my best to protect you from the greater harm you faced, Helen, and I am sure that you have not forgotten that._

_Please reply, if you can, to the address above. I hope fervently to hear from you without too much delay._

_Regards,_

_Amon Leopold Goeth_

Helen's hands shook, and the folded paper floated gently to the ground as it slipped from her fingers. The envelope which it had come in, with its familiar handwriting on the front, remained on the small table next to her.

She rose too quickly and stumbled, flinging out a hand to steady herself on the frame of her bed. She moved shakily to the washroom and leant a hand against the doorframe, her head spinning.

_Some things will never leave you._

She reached out and turned on the tap, a steady trickle of cool water running over her skin, and she splashed some onto her face. The smeared mirror in front of her seemed to taunt her, its cracked surface showing only her weakness, never her strength. Freedom was not treating Helen well.

Her thin, almost gaunt face was far too pale. Powder did nothing for her. There were bags under her eyes. Helen noted that her eyes seemed too big for her face, dark and anguished.

_Are these the eyes of a rat? Hath not a Jew eyes?_

Something inside her twisted uncomfortably, and Helen spun, dropping to her knees on the tiles in front of the toilet as the contents of her stomach rose, and she retched until only bile filled her mouth. She turned her head, resting it against the porcelain. As she dragged a thin, shaking hand across her mouth, tears slid down Helen's cheeks, the sting in her eyes searing as she wept.


End file.
